


Swimming

by Beleriandings



Category: Akatsuki no Yona | Yona of the Dawn
Genre: Caves, Childhood, Gen, Learning to Swim, Mostly flashbacks, Past Character Death, Seiryuu feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:05:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6546028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was Kija who asked him when he learned to swim, and Shin-ah was not, at first, sure how to answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swimming

“Shin-ah, you’re a very good swimmer! When did you learn that?”

The question took him a little by surprise; he was still not quite used to his new name, let alone to people actually talking to him directly. Usually they had stayed away, but when he had met one of the villagers by chance, as often as not they would make a sign to ward off evil, or cover their eyes and curse him for a monster, pulling their children hastily away from his masked gaze.

But not these people. They were kind, and they talked to him, even cared about his safety and comfort. _Friends_ , thought Shin-ah, still not quite able to believe it.

The white one - _Kija_ , he thought, the one who had called Shin-ah brother - certainly did ask a lot of questions though. Like the others, he seemed to regard it as an enjoyable activity, the asking of questions back and forth, the conversation drifting between them and the sharing of smiles and laughter. Shin-ah had sometimes heard the villagers’ conversations too and he knew he was not so good at it himself; but like so many other things lately, he had resolved to learn.

And so he thought back, sifting through the memories of his past, trying to form them into words that made sense, that would not take too long to answer Kija’s question. First, he thought about why Kija would ask such a question; yes, it was probably because Shin-ah had jumped into the water to catch a fish that first day, a few days ago now. Kija - and the others too, for that matter - had seemed alarmed, though he did not really understand why.

But no, he was drifting off in the wrong direction to answer the question. He let his mind go back, once he understood that, to his past.

## *

It had not been Ao that had taught him to swim.

His predecessor had always barked at him to stay away from the riverside, on the rare occasions when Ao fished, usually when there was no meat to be hunted in the forest or traded from the villagers. Though the shallow part of the river was only waist-deep for a man as tall as Ao - and Ao was _very_ tall, the child had thought - the current was fast and sometimes unpredictable. 

(Ao could swim, but then, Seiryuu reasoned, Ao was strong and brave, and could naturally do things that the child could never dream of doing.)

Ao said that the river was dangerous and that he should stay on the bank if he didn’t want to get swept away, and Seiryuu - nervously watching a leaf caught in a whirling eddy as the fast water rushed over the rocks - had believed it wholeheartedly. When Ao returned, he always let out the breath he had been holding. He liked the idea of going in the water himself not at all. 

One day, Ao had been hunting for river mussels in the pebbly shallows, to eat or to trade, and Seiryuu had been playing with an old empty mussel shell on the bank a safe distance away, upstream. The shells were very beautiful; though they were drab outside, on the inside they were pearlescent and delicately coloured, shimmering. He loved to turn them back and forth, watching the light dance across the bright inside surface. 

He was doing this when he saw a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, his head snapping up immediately.

There was a splashing there, far upstream, almost at the place where the river rushed down from its mountain cleft that carried it from its source. He could see someone struggling in the water, arms futilely waving in the air, struggling and sinking. _Drowning_ , he realised in horror. Sunlight glanced off wet, dark hair for a moment, before the head slipped back beneath the surface, but not before Seiryuu had been able to see a face. He drew in a short, sharp breath, tears coming to his eyes behind his mask as he dropped his shell on the ground.

It was that boy from the village, the one he had so desperately wanted to be friends with. Seiryuu didn’t know his name, but he had spent a lot of time watching his little group of friends at their games; at least until the inevitable moment the children always noticed him and fled, or one of their mothers noticed Seiryuu and hustled their children away from him, fear in their eyes, making signs or whispering prayers to guard against evil spirits.

But Seiryuu  _did_ recognise this boy; he was the one with the spinning top, so bright and quick, and a whole group of friends to play with. He was all on his own now though, and struggling upstream in the fast current… Seiryuu glanced at Ao, standing in the river. Ao was facing upstream, but, the child realised, Ao could not see as far as he could, not now. The boy from the village might soon get swept further downstream, closer to Ao, but by then it might be too late…

Seiryuu looked at the struggling boy in the river. He looked at Ao. He looked at the water, fast and turbulent and rushing over the sharp rocks.

He suddenly knew what he was going to do, though the mere idea scared him.

He began to run, tripping half over tree roots, feet sinking into the soft mud by the riverside. He was coming close to where the boy was struggling in the water now. It was not as far as he had thought, and for a brief moment he felt doubt; maybe he should have just called for Ao after all? But no, it was too late now. Without another thought, he jumped into the water.

The current was strong, even stronger than he’d expected. He flapped his arms like he thought he should; swimming couldn’t be that hard, could it? The roaring of water was filling up his head. He shrieked, swallowing water as he struggled to bob back to the surface after a wavelet submerged him for a second, in that moment unsure of which way was up and which was down.

The boy… where was the boy? He tried to focus, pushing his head above water and shaking his hair from his eyes. He realised he had lost his mask when the wave had swept over him.

At the same time, he also realised that he could no longer feel the silty river bed under his feet. He must have been swept into the deep channel in the centre, away from the shallows, where to him - from the bank, always from the bank - the deep blue-green water had always looked like it had no bottom.

His eyes widened then, as he caught a glimpse of the foaming white of rapids just downstream.

Even as he had the thought, the current strengthened, sweeping him under for a second more, so that he sucked in water through his nose, coming up coughing and spluttering, flailing his arms weakly and calling out for Ao. But wasn’t Ao too far away? _There was no one to hear him, he was weak and stupid and helpless, he would be dashed to pieces on the stones, if he didn’t drown first_ …

Strong arms, going around his waist and picking him up, water streaming from his mouth and nose as he was plucked from the current.

“Seiryuu, what in all hells do you think you’re _doing_? Didn’t you hear me when I told you to stay out of the river?”

He looked up, seeing Ao’s face glaring back at him in furious anger, his mask off and his mane of wild blue hair slicked down to his head, darkened and dripping with water.

Seiryuu stopped struggling, went limp in the cradle of Ao’s arm, and burst into tears.

Ao frowned even deeper. “You too, huh?”

For the first time, Seiryuu noticed that held under Ao’s other arm was the boy from the village, who was shrieking and coughing up water and sobbing, trying to cover his eyes with his hands in between beating his balled-up fists against Ao’s side in what looked like pure terror. Ao made a derisive noise at the other child.

“Oh, calm down kid. I’m not going to eat you. I’m taking you back to the - ”

“Lord Seiryuu, put that child down.”

Ao froze, his feet planted in the gravelly mud on the shallow edge of the stream bed, steady and sure against the current. Seiryuu stopped crying at once, raising his head from where Ao was carrying him, wishing he could hide behind him.

On the shore were a group of the villagers, wariness and fear written in the tension of their stances, the way they drew together as they all stared at Ao anxiously, with obvious dislike. Some of them held pikes, or small hunting knives, pointed nervously at Ao. 

Ao seemed to pay no attention to the weapons held up against him in trembling hands. He made no answer either, but merely walked forward onto the muddy riverbank, slowly and deliberately. Carefully, he put down both children down on their feet. Seiryuu took the chance to duck behind Ao’s legs, peering cautiously back at the villagers from behind him. The other boy, though, immediately scrambled to his feet and bolted away still sobbing, back to a woman who looked like she could be his mother, hiding his face in her skirt. She had pulled the hood of her cloak over her head - though the day was too warm for it - so that her eyes were hidden, though Seiryuu could see the fear in them easily enough through the fabric. The air was thick with tension as she placed an arm around the boy, the other villagers drawing closer around the two.

“Stay away from my son, monster.”

Immediately, the others hushed her, in fearful tones, whispers running amongst them; _don’t antagonise him. He’s already taken his mask off. Do you want to get us all turned to stone? Leave the cursed ones well alone. We should never have come here._

“Tell your son to be more careful around the water then” growled Ao. “And maybe then I won’t need to jump in and rescue the brat.”

But it was too late; no one was listening. Instead, the people who had come were hurrying away, back to the village, the boy never even giving the two of them a second glance.

When they had gone, Ao sighed, pushing his wet hair out of his face and turning to look at Seiryuu, looming over the child. “What did I tell you about water? Don’t you ever listen? Or do you _want_ to drown?” A strange expression passed over Ao’s face at that, but disappeared so quickly that Seiryuu might have imagined it. “So, what have you got to say for yourself, kid?”

 _But Ao, you went in the water to save that boy, so I should be able to too_ , he wanted to say. _I should be able to save the villagers_. But the words wouldn’t come, and he knew they’d probably only make Ao even more angry. So Seiryuu said nothing, merely gazed back up at Ao, his heart aching as he sniffed. “Sorry” he mumbled at last, hanging his head.

“You would have been, if I hadn’t been there to pull you out. You know you can’t swim. Ach, what were you _thinking_?”

Seiryuu looked down at his feet, still fighting back tears. _I just wanted to help, he wanted to say, I wanted to save him, show him I’m not a monster_. 

But still he said nothing.

Ao sighed resignedly, as Seiryuu shivered in the wind despite the warmth of the day. He seemed to spot something in the stony shallows, kneeling down to get it. He straightened up again, handing Seiryuu his mask. “You lost something.”

With that, Ao replaced his own mask, and turned away from the river bank, Seiryuu half running along behind to keep up as he grasped for Ao’s hand.

 

Seiryuu had much time to think that over in later years, that and all the other memories of life when there were wide skies and sparkling water, before he had been shut away in the caves and tunnels. Before the dragon in his eyes - no, before _he himself_ \- had killed those soldiers. 

Those following years were filled with looking backwards, the lonely years without Ao in them, that was; the ones where he was alone in the dark.

Seiryuu was, perhaps, ten or eleven winters old when he learned to swim. 

The caves in which the villagers lived were not built by them; they were the remnants of an older civilisation, a people who were long gone and forgotten, but had dug their homes into the mountainside. Those people had built both into the mountains and around them, extended the existing natural cave system, sealing off a little of it for warm, dry human habitation. 

Or _almost_ sealing it off, at any rate. 

It was not long after that village had moved that Seiryuu found the way through, in the older, unused chambers that the villagers never went to; they didn’t need to, and need was the only reason anyone did anything in this place. But there it was; the little gap in the rock that led to the older cave system, the one not carved by humans but by water and the slow advance of centuries.

For Seiryuu, it was very easy to find.

The villagers - fearful, cautious and afraid, lived close together, in a tight-knit network of interlinked chambers near to the gates that led out to the rocky hillside. The caves they lived in had been extended and expanded over the years since that day that the village hid itself away, it was true, but they were still confined by the places where the light was. They could carry torches if they wanted to negotiate the caves, to delve further into the rock, but hardly any of them ever did. Instead they stayed close to their hearth fires, their piled furs and blankets of woven wool. 

Or maybe, Seiryuu thought with a slight pain in his chest, that was just what you did when you had a family, when you had friends. Maybe then you had no need to explore, to find new things, because all you needed was right there.

Or maybe they were just afraid. Still, in Seiryuu’s opinion - not that anyone had ever asked it, of course - there was still much that they were missing, even in this dark, enclosed place. Being a monster, he thought sometimes, did occasionally have it advantages. In the dark, the villagers were blind, restricted to using smoky rush tapers and oil lanterns if they wanted to explore new passages, chained to their dim little circles of light.

But Seiryuu wasn’t. His eyes let him see in the dark as easily as on the brightest day under the sky. And the walls were no barrier either; he could easily look through them, trace a path back through the passages from which he had come, and so he would never get lost. He could find the next chamber, spot where the walls were thin as eggshells. Where there was a gap, a crawlspace large enough to fit through that opened out into another cave, higher-ceilinged than even the loftiest of the houses in the original village.

He found he liked the idea that he was almost certainly the first person to lay eyes on these places, the dampened tap and occasional splash of his footsteps and the quiet ringing of his bells - magnified and strangely, but beautifully, distorted - the first sounds that had echoed there except for the slow, ceaseless dripping of water; he never grew tired of that. Besides, it made the solitude seem purposeful, almost. It made being a monster a little more bearable, at any rate.

Sometimes, he would even speak some words - as he so rarely ever did - just to delight in the sound of his own voice coming back to him. It was almost like talking to someone, he thought, like the sound of many voices instead of just one.

His voice was taken from him abruptly though, breathless for just a moment, when he first entered _that_ place, the sight he saw stealing the very air from his lungs.

The entire cavernous natural dome up above seemed to _shimmer_ , light shattered into a million bright pieces by a multitude of glinting crystal facets. And there _was_ light here, Seiryuu realised, light bright enough even for the likes of the villagers to see, with their poor dull eyes that missed so much.

 _Where was the light coming from though?_ Seiryuu frowned, confused, tearing his attention from the myriad of fragments of brilliance above. It seemed, he thought, to be coming from the damp cave floor and the dark, still pools that dotted it, a strange mottled glow of almost eerie blue-green, like nothing he had ever seen before. Certainly nothing like the sun and moon and stars of his childhood, or the comforting wood fires Ao had made to cook their food or keep the winters’ chill at bay, of the flickering, smoking tapers of the villagers.

No, this light was different; for one thing, it seemed to be coming from the damp rock and still water itself. Whatever it was though, he knew one thing; it was very beautiful. His mouth hung open a little as he slipped off his mask, dropping it to the ground at his side without really thinking about what he was doing. Bells tinkled against the stone as he raised his face up, taking a step forwards in fascination with the myriad of crystal formations above and the strange light they reflected.

There were subtle colours in the crystal, he was quick to realise. It was not quite all white as he had first thought, but glimmered also with soft, pale shades of other colours, iridescent as a rainbow in places. Blue like the luminous pale haze after rain. Pink like the delicate flower petals that fell from the tree in the old village’s marketplace. Green like the first shoots of spring, and pale yellow like the crisp skin of the pear Ao had got for him once when Seiryuu was very young, slightly underripe but still the sweetest thing the child had ever tasted, bringing tears to his eyes.

Not colours he had ever thought to see again, for such soft, sweet things as those did not exist under the ground. Or so he had thought. He kept walking forwards, fascinated. He kept his head tilted back and up, drinking in the sight of it greedily.

It was no wonder, he would think later, that he lost his footing on the wet, uneven ground, his feet slipping out from under him all of a sudden.

Immediately, he flung out a hand to steady himself, but it was too late; he was falling now, boots skidding on the slick wet stone. 

Except that a moment later there wasn’t stone anymore. Instead, there was water, ripples lapping up against the lip of the rock that dropped rapidly away beneath him.

Before he could recover his footing, he was suddenly falling, the cold of the water like a physical blow to the chest, knocking the air from his lungs. It made him breath too fast, convulsively, inhaling more water than air. He thrashed his arms and legs frantically, panic surging up within him as the deep water closed around him, over his head. Was he going to die? For a flash of a moment, he thought of Ao. But Ao wasn’t here to pull him from the water anymore. There seemed to be no bottom to the pool, and he kicked and thrashed his arms, but the weight of the water was pressing in on his chest as he struggled, his lungs burning as he struggled to avoid breathing, his own heartbeat a dull roaring in his ears. His fingers hit something hard - rock perhaps? the side of the pool? - but they gained no purchase on the slick, damp surface, and he was still sinking, inexorably pulled down as his whole body screamed at him to take a breath.

His clothes felt impossibly heavy, dragging him down. His consciousness was blurry around the edges, every movement clumsy, an impossible effort against the weight of water all around him. It reminded him of something in his past, but he couldn’t think what, his mind too scattered, filled with panic and _cold_ , heavy, crushing cold.

For a sudden, nonsensical moment, the thought of his eyes, of unleashing his power, flickered through his oxygen-starved mind. But no, it was only the dragon within him, his power triggered by the need for self-preservation, even when there was no one to fight against. For his eyes were useless against this threat, the inexorable weight of all that cold water; all his power would do was paralyse him, leaving him to sink to the bottom of the pool, deep below, where his body would probably never be found. The villagers wouldn’t even know until a new Seiryuu was born, a lonely, lost child without a predecessor to take care of them.

 _No_.

The word filled up his mind, burning through him against the chill of the water. No, he must live, he had to… he tried to kick his legs and paddle with his arms, pouring every single drop of strength in his body into it. It was no good though. He even opened his mouth for just a moment, breathing in water, before panic and despair flooded over him, his chest convulsing.

For a moment, the world went completely blank.

_A memory, a day at the riverside in the bright sun. A child caught in the current. Two children. A man, swimming into the deeper part of the river to save them. How had he done it? Seiryuu had not seen it then, but he had seen Ao swim before. He was good at watching ever minute movement, and repeating exactly._

_How hard can it be?_

_Ao, can’t you save me one more time?_

What were the exact movements? Kick with his legs, hold his fingers together to make his hands into paddles to press against the water…

He felt his body move.

Encouraged, he tried again, throwing more strength into it than he had ever known he had. He didn’t know where it came from, this fierce will to survive, but right now he was not going to question it. He carried on, in the direction he felt himself being crushed down from, the hardest path; he assumed that was up.

His head broke the surface, after what felt like hours, but must only have been seconds, given that his heart was still beating, pounding furiously as he grasped clumsily at the rock at his side and above with trembling fingers, taking great greedy gulping breathes that included as much water as air. Water was poured from him as he dragged himself out and back onto the rocky cave floor once more, his chest aching as he collapsed on the ground coughing out a stream of water.

He came back to himself moments later, still coughing up water, more water than he would have thought possible. After a while, when there was no more water left to pour from him lungs, he simply lay there, collapsing with exhaustion and the blank nothingness the panic had left behind in its wake.

He had no idea how much time passed, but he woke again a while later, his eyes opening to the bright shimmering crystals above his head. He was shivering violently, his hands and feet numb, and he rubbed his palms together to try to warm them a little. It helped, fractionally. He blinked. Suddenly, and to his surprise, he found himself looking up, curious. And so, despite his weakened, aching muscles, he found himself raising his head and looking around.

His gaze skated over the pool he had fallen into, eyeing the now glassy-still black surface with strong trepidation.

It must be _deep_ , deeper than he had thought, a sinkhole rather than a pool. He pushed the sodden hair from out of his eyes and rolled over onto his side, looking down into the depths.

He breathed in too fast, but this time in astonishment, rather than mere desperation for air. There wasn’t just this cave. There were a whole network of them down there, joined together. A system of flooded chambers, deep below the mountain. Maybe those caves had once been as beautiful as this one, when they were filled with air rather than water. But there had likely never been a single person who had set foot there, no one to see their beauty before the water came, flooding them with cold darkness, cutting them off from the everyday world of rock and air.

For a long time he lay there on his side, heedless of the cold water dripping from his hair into his eyes, just looking. 

It was a flicker of something bright that drew his attention back to the real world, and he gazed down at his own body in alarm, which soon turned to wonder. 

His clothes were sodden, saturated with water, and the chill was beginning to creep into his bones, making him shudder. But he was paying no attention to that. 

Every part of his body seemed to shimmer, with the same pale green-blue brilliance of the pool. He peered back down into the otherwise dark water, watching the bright speckles drift lazily in the glassy blackness he had stirred up with his struggling. Whatever this stuff was, it was in the water, and now he too glimmered with it. Against the dark of the rest of the cave, it looked like the brightest stars of the night sky, devoid of clouds; not something he had ever thought to see again. 

Seiryuu stared at his own palm in delight for a while, tracing patterns in the glowing brightness on his hand, dipping his hand back in the water to shimmer anew when it started to drip away. 

He was not sure how long he stayed there - time did not really mean much here, anyway. But when the cold became too much, making his teeth chatter painfully and his breath hitch in his chest, he reluctantly drew himself to his feet. 

He could walk, though he still felt drained by his experience. He had nearly drowned, he realised - strangely detached - as he picked up his dropped mask. The fur attached to it was mostly dry though, and at least offered some scant warmth, though he could feel the water from his clothes and hair soaking into it, weighing that down too. 

But he had _not_ drowned: that was the next thought that came to him, as he straightened up and gazed back again at the pool he had fallen into. Just for a moment, there, he had been swimming, rather than simply flailing in the water. He had watched Ao’s movements, all those years ago, and that was why he was alive. 

He wondered what Ao would say, if he could see this, and immediately felt guilty; Ao would give him the most terrible shouting at, but it would be because he was afraid for him. Ao was like that. 

He frowned, taking one last look at this beautiful place, before turning his face away. He had much to think on, on the long, painstaking journey back to the surface. 

Still, he would remember the way he had come.

Later, he sat by the small fire in the cavern where he usually slept, drying his clothes by the fire’s heat, barely tasting the rice and strips of hard, stringy dried meat he was eating, his mind too full. 

Not that it was a particularly remarkable meal; his never were, though at least he went hungry only some of the time. The villagers would leave offerings of food these days, irregularly, by the crudely made shrine that was supposed to keep the evil of the dragon’s curse at bay. 

(Usually, it was pregnant women who brought the offerings of food and lamp oil, or sometimes their husbands. All were desperate, angry. _Please, cruel dragon god, if you exist… don’t make the next monster my child. Spare my family. Let someone else fall under the curse._ Seiryuu watched them, on occasion. He wondered too, sometimes, if his own mother had done the same, if there had been a shrine in the old village. He couldn’t remember that place very clearly, anymore. If she had, then clearly it hadn’t worked, he thought. Seiryuu had asked Ao about his mother once, but Ao had said he knew nothing about her. Even then, as a small child, Seiryuu had known Ao was lying; the twitch in his mouth under his mask, the slight narrowing of his eyes were clear signs, impossible to miss. Still, Seiryuu hadn’t asked again, and now he never would.)

The shrine was flanked by two roughly made bamboo dolls in tiny, painted masks with empty eyes. Seiryuu hated the sight of those figures, but he at least appreciated the food the villagers left in their fear, as there was nothing in the caves to hunt or gather, and no one to trade with. Not that he really knew how to trade, though he knew he could hunt, if given the chance. 

(Maybe if he knew how to swim, he would be able to fish, too. The thought was an interesting one.)

But even that, he only paid the barest of notice as he ate; his mind was still far away below the level of the ground, back in that bright chamber with the glowing water, illuminating the bright crystals above. Something about it seemed to have embedded itself in his heart, and now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

Where there other caves like that? If so, he wanted to find them. He wanted to find _all_ of them, to explore the world from the inside out, if he was to be here for the rest of his life. Even if he was a monster - and he was, he knew, as driving rain flashed through his mind, twisted figures collapsed face down in the mud all around a child whose bright blue hair was the only colour in the vast, weeping greyness - did he not deserve to see something bright, something beautiful? 

(He wasn’t sure of the answer to that. But he knew he had been granted eyes that could see all, when he was born, and now he had been granted something to _look_ at, which felt like an even greater gift to him.)

(And maybe, when his successor was born, Seiryuu could show the child too, a little brightness against a whole lifetime spent in the dark. It was all he could do, he thought.)

After eating, he practiced a little with Ao’s sword - his own sword, as he had to remind himself constantly, even now - swinging it in the air and doing some exercises. His muscles ached still, but he didn’t want to go a day without practicing; he wanted at least to be strong, to be able to defend the village if he needed to. He had grown a little lately, outgrowing his old clothes, but the sword was still too long and heavy for him. He wished he could be tall like Ao. He knew he could remember and precisely copy Ao’s smallest movements if he had to fight, but he feared his own strength was lacking. 

(He feared what he might have to do, if his strength was lacking.)

After he had finished his sword practice, he found that his clothes were dry, so he pulled them on again, revelling in the feeling of the soft fur against his skin, still warm from drying by the fireside. 

He lay down on his back, staring upwards as the fire burned down. High up and faint, through layers and layer of rock, he could see the sky. The moon was rising and the stars beginning to twinkle. It was not a very clear view, but it was something at least. It was more than the villagers had, though he supposed they were free to go outside if they wanted to. Not that many of them ever did.  

When he had first been sent to the caves, Seiryuu had hoped that one day he might again be able to turn his face up to the sky and look without the stone in the way. Since then he had more or less accepted that that was very unlikely. But at least now, he knew somewhere else that was beautiful, a bright cave that was nothing like the outside world, and yet had its own beauty.

Well, he thought as he began to drift to sleep, it was good enough to be going on with. 

That year, he redoubled his wanderings, exploring whenever he could. Which was most of the time; the villagers didn’t seem to need him, as they had once needed Ao. Their hiding place was too good; no one seeking the power of the dragon would ever find it. It was both a relief and a wound to him.

Still, when he walked through the echoing, dripping chambers, he was able to forget it, at least for a while.

He had been right; there were more caves with the same brilliant crystal. Or rather, not _quite_ the same; Seiryuu delighted in how each crystal facet, each plane of flat, angular brightness, was different. No two were the same in every particular, and he spent many hours simply staring at them, unable to look away. He knew it was impossible, but still, he wanted to look at every single one if he could. 

There were the more pools too, though he was meticulously careful to avoid those now, taking detours around the black glassy surfaces on cautious feet. Sometimes, though, he would kneel at the edge of a pool, gazing down into it. Not all of the pools had the glowing green-blue pinpricks he had seen before, but many did. He still didn’t know what that light was, but it was fascinating, and sometimes he would trail his hand in it, waving it backwards and forwards in the water and watching the glowing points of light drift languidly, heedless for once of the cold. 

It was a few more months before he dared to do more than touch the water with his fingertips, but looking back, he knew that he would always have done it at some point, sooner or later. The water was like that, calling out to him.

One day, Seiryuu resolved to teach himself to swim. 

That, however, involved getting in the water. Even though he was prepared for it this time - taking off his outer clothes and folding them carefully, lowering himself in while clinging fiercely to the side of the rock - the water was as heart-chillingly cold as he remembered. For a while, he just hung on to the side of the flooded sinkhole, teeth chattering as he seriously considered simply getting out and running back to his little cave with his warm fire. 

He didn’t do that though. Instead he kicked his legs in the water, a combination of pleasantly surprised and somewhat alarmed by how the motion easily pushed him a little way from the lip of the rock, though he was still holding on, suspended high above the flooded cave system below. 

That was when he made his mistake; he looked down. He could see everything down there, a great, wheeling void below him, and all that kept him from falling into it was the water that had nearly sucked his life away last time…

Immediately, panic flashed through him, and then he was scrambling desperately for the side, for the solid rock. For just a moment, his fingers slipped, and he lost his grip on the rock, pushing himself out a little further with another jolt of pure terror, sickening and cold. 

But then - only moments later, though it felt like an age - his fingers were making contact with the sidewall again, and he was throwing all his strength into pulling himself up, out of the water to lie shivering on the rock, immediately drawing his furs around himself to still the chattering of his teeth, vowing never to try something so dangerous again. 

Needless to say, Seiryuu did not keep that promise very long. 

The next time was easier, and the next, and the next after that. He found he could kick his legs and paddle with his arms, for a little way, and he could also hold himself up in the water without support if he wanted. It was reassuring that even though the great cavernous flooded spaces below him were still there, he was confident that he could stop himself from falling into them now. 

After a few more months, he was swimming the whole way across the largest of the pools. 

Not long after, he was diving, holding his breath a little longer each time, his eyes open wide in fascination with everything he saw. There were creatures here, little blind fish with no eyes at all, their skin white and translucent. He supposed they wouldn’t have been able to see in the dark anyway, which was why they had no eyes; they didn’t need them. Seiryuu felt sorry for them, for there was so _much_ to see down here. 

In the still pools there were the points of light he had seen, which would always cover him in starry brilliance whenever he left the water that they shared. In one cave, he found a network of little rushing streams, shallow rills that eventually converged together, plunging down into a deep sinkhole. But upstream there were creatures living on the rocky stream beds; small pale crabs, determinedly clinging onto the rock in the fast current. Strange creatures that he thought at first might be lizards, but for their skin, which was soft and delicate, pink and white as cherry blossom, with beautiful pale fringes on their heads that swayed and rippled in the current when they swam. 

There were shellfish - he didn’t know what kind, but they were different from the mussels Ao had collected on the sunlit river bank, larger, more irregular looking, and duller, at least from the outside. But Seiryuu had a moment of purest delight the first time he found a bright pearl inside one of their shells. It was not quite white, but a pale, dusty blue-grey, a little ridged. It made him think of the sky at dusk, and of Ao, and he loved none of his other possessions better than that first pearl.

He found more pearls, in time; he had five, then six, then seven… one day when he was returning to the caves up above, he remembered the pale green glass beads that one of the villagers had left at the shrine a few weeks ago. The pearls would look beautiful with those, he thought, admiring one between his fingers, twisting it backwards and forwards so it caught the scant light. He had a piece of string, and he made himself a necklace of them, which he only took off to get in the water once more. 

Sometimes, he caught the little blind fish that swam in the pools, picked up the shellfish and cooked them; they were better than the dried meat, excessively salted fish, the plain rice he was given by the villagers. 

He was growing older, now. The years were turning him into a swordsman, a hunter, truly this time. Once, cruel men found the caves, on the hunt for the dragon’s power or to steal the village’s food; he never found out which. It didn’t matter though - either way, Seiryuu was called upon to defend the village. He took no pride in the fighting, the killing, but he did it all the same, for it was his duty to protect the village. _Hadn’t they given up so much on account of him, because of his curse?_

He had a companion now; the squirrel barely ever left his side. Seiryuu didn’t really know why, because privately he thought that if _he_ were a squirrel, and free, he would never stay so close to a monster like Seiryuu. Yet stay she did, and despite himself, Seiryuu was glad of it. 

Seiryuu did not know how to ask the squirrel her name, so he called her Ao, the only name he could think of.

Ao was a creature of the outside. But still she would ride along on his shoulder, chittering in bright counterpoint to the sound of his bells as he walked through the caves, making him feel a little less alone. 

His life might be dark, but in the meantime, at least, he had her. He had the caves to explore, and he was protected from the people outside the village, who might want to harm him. He hadn’t yet needed to use his eyes, after that time. 

It wasn’t much; it certainly wasn’t enough. But at least it was something. 

## *

“… _Shin-ah?_ ”

He realised that Kija was staring at him, mild concern on his face. Shin-ah blinked behind his mask, belatedly remembering that Kija had asked him a question. _When did you learn to swim?_  That question had probably been a while ago now, but Shin-ah couldn’t even begin to work out how to answer, how to fit a tangle of memories, of senses like reflections on water, into an answer that made sense, that he could say out loud. He would have to get better at this. 

Still, he knew he had to try. All of this was new, just like dipping his feet into that cold pool the first time. Carefully, deliberately, he opened his mouth to answer.

“When… I… fell into the water.”

Kija blinked, clearly unsure of how to respond. Shin-ah began to feel fear crowding in at him. Had he said the wrong thing? _He had, hadn’t he, he had ruined it and they would see that he was nothing more than a weak, useless_ -

A laugh, bright and warm, with no hint of malice or mocking in it. He turned, to see where it was coming from and saw Yona behind him, with Hak and Yoon at either side of her. She was smiling, and the sight made a warm glow of joy expand in his chest. But before she or he could say anything else, Hak let out a quiet laugh too. “Ha! I guess that’s the only way anyone really learns anything.”

“Yes, by practicing it” said Yona, smiling around at the little group around her, with an encouraging nod to Shin-ah. “I guess it is.”

That night Shin-ah lay awake for a while, with the moonlight falling on his upturned face. But as he slipped into dreams, the last thought to come to his mind was: _if there are unknown waters ahead, then maybe now they do not seem quite so dark_. 

**Author's Note:**

> The author makes no claim to be an expert on anything to do with actual cave ecosystems. The author just wanted to write about Shin-ah + bioluminescent cave algae + axolotls if possible. 
> 
> (Also I was wondering how Shin-ah learned how to swim so well and this was the flash-headcanon result!)


End file.
